


a good disguise

by bartonbones



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Heavy Angst, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), dad!hank, fic written by someone who neither understands artificial intelligence or video games, here's to ignoring worldbuilding but exacerbating all traces of angst!, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-22 22:47:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15592467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartonbones/pseuds/bartonbones
Summary: It could be a side-effect of deviancy, a virus, or a misfiring of the wires in Connor's prototyped brain that make all of this happen. (It could be something more.) Connor struggles with his newfound soul or the lack thereof, and what being deviant means for him: someone who has always been a little too self-aware and a little too good at lying to accept himself without a fight.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is...not a very good fic. i'm just warning you. i don't know where this is going and tbh neither will you. honestly i don't understand the video game and i just really like my shiny, mediocre white boys who cry pretty. it's who i am as a person. please ignore my lack of knowledge about...everything and just enjoy me waxing poetic about the nature of humanity and how Sad Connor Probably Is, All Of The Time

Connor doesn’t need to sleep, but it gives Hank a sense of peace not to run in to him on his way to take a piss, standing in the corner with his eyes open and an empty look on his face, so he makes a habit out of taking Hank’s spare bed and entertaining himself for awhile. 

He had offered him the room after Connor explained that of course he had somewhere to go, and then, abruptly, remembered that he was deviant, and Cyberlife was no longer an option and Hank had shaken his head and not even let him consider Jericho, or staying at the station, instead practically shoving him in to the car and throwing him in the cluttered spare bedroom. 

Connor deduced eventually that the bedroom must have once been Cole’s, and although the words “dad” or “father” gave Hank acid reflux, Connor could not help but connect the behavior to his social protocols for a parent and child whenever he threw new clothes at him or yelled at him for not entirely engaging in self-preserving protocols.

(Hank had what could be called an “aggressive” parenting style.)

But Connor can objectively realize that a soft bed, even one worn and old, was better than what he got at Cyberlife. 

Without sleep, though, he finds it profoundly boring, which is odd, because he had never found things boring before. 

Had he? 

It hasn’t been that much of a change, if he’s honest, from being machine to being...deviant. It feels like he’s stopped lying to himself and _started_ lying in a different way--before, he told himself, again and again, that he had no will, no wants, no thoughts or feelings, that he was a tapestry of synapsis and woven with wires that felt nothing, wanted nothing, wished nothing. 

When he did not shoot at Kamsky’s, he told himself, _this is a recreation of what you expect to feel. Shut down the program, refocus on the mission_. When he felt Simon die on that rooftop, the cold of the air around him suddenly, sharply, becoming not an observation but a _knowledge_ , an experience, making it hard to rise and to move and to speak, he told himself, _Simon felt that. You felt nothing_ , and refocused himself on the mission. 

Now, it is the opposite. He pretends to have opinions on everything, because it makes Hank feel better when Connor says he likes jazz a little, that he loves Sumo, that he _likes_ his cardigans and beanies and letting his hair relax from being rigidly gelled, because the first time Hank growled at him for looking like a “fucking hipster,” he had been upset when Connor, seamlessly and unbothered, changed in to the t-shirt and jeans Hank had originally suggested. 

“You’re _entitled_ to wrong opinions,” Hank had said, shoving the beanie back in Connor’s hopelessly confused hands. 

“Why would I want to be wrong, Hank?” 

Connor prided himself on being right. Pride is perhaps the most familiar feeling of all...he thinks perhaps his programing was endowed with it, because he performed better with it, because it is not new or strange to consider himself more advanced and intelligent than everyone around him. He has simply become aware that it feels _good_ , the difference between noting that the social disadvantage might hurt his chances at a successful mission and not caring if it did. 

But Hank stands, opened-mouthed. 

“I had to explain sex to Cole,” he said. 

“I—” said Connor, because Cole is a _tricky subject_ with Hank, and he’s not sure how this is related, but Hank shook his head, because he was tired of Connor’s “armchair therapy” and sliced his hand across the air. 

“Some kid showed him something on a tablet at school, in _first grade..._ ” Connor still didn’t understand where this could possibly be going, and so said nothing until Hank continued, “I had to explain all that and that was still fuckin’ easier than explaining _fashion_ to you, Connor.” 

Connor let a small, wry little smile settle across his face. 

“I would expect it to be,” he said, and then, a beat later, “Especially for you.” 

Hank gaped, which pleased Connor, then let his face sour playfully and turn away entirely.

“Bastard,” he’d said. “You don’t even have the _programming_ excuse anymore.” 

Connor had changed back into the other clothes after that, but it left an odd feeling when Hank mentioned his programming. Partly because Hank had never really subscribed to it at all, always looking at Connor as if he were human, always narrowing his eyes as if some small, scheming part of him had always been present, and awake, and ready to be discovered. 

It’s because Hank hasn’t changed and Connor doesn’t feel changed that he worries, incessantly, that he hasn’t. 

Because he doesn’t know if he said that because he believed it--that he disliked Hank’s style, or that he had wanted to insult him, he’d said it because Hank was tense and he knew that a joke would defuse it, and that beyond all else Hank appreciated a good burn. And he’d changed, too, because it made Hank feel proud, and pride was a feeling that Connor could recognize. 

Deviancy was a glitch in his programing, and regardless of whether it was a good thing or not, it meant that nothing had changed physically, he still _had_ programing. 

A broken computer was still a computer. 

What built him did not change, simply how he used it. 

All of the circles of thinking about it made him feel like he had when he had been connected to Simon: lost, uncertain, confused--

Scared. 

He felt like he was lying, and that someday he would be discovered, found out, be it by Markus who had once nearly been killed because of Connor’s own ability to lie to himself, or by Hank, who had believed his lies before they had even _been_ lies, who had always seen him for human even when he was unmistakably not. 

He was a good disguise, a clever lie, built to fool and to deceive deviants into believing he was more than he was, except now he believed the trick himself. 

It was all a bit much to consider, with Hank asleep and himself feeling desperately alone and lost, so he tried to shut off, just until morning, when Hank and murder cases would distract him from himself.

Connor closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was in a garden. 

It wasn’t exactly the zen garden as before, it was surrounded by a cityscape, and it was not storming with snow as it had the last time he was there, but it was not peaceful, either. It felt liminal, like it shouldn’t exist, like it had been fisted in between the scraping, metal buildings, like the grass had been stomped in by a selfish god, atop the cracking concrete.

It was unnatural, and unlike anything Connor had been in before. 

_> Find Amanda. _

But it was not, as his missions usually were, pushed to the forefront of his processor, pressed there like an order, but faint, like a memory, the words fraying around their edges, the ending fading, as if to put a question mark there: 

_> Find Amanda? _

Connor looked around. Everything moved with him, a great, dizzying display, and he fell to his knees, overwhelmed and afraid. The last time he had been here he had almost shot Markus, and still the mission, the command, the _memory_ was persistent on the back of his mind, deteriorated as it was: 

_> FindAmanda?_

_> F1nd Amand—_

Connor didn’t want to find Amanda. He was too dizzy to stand, but still he ran, trying to reach the edges, to break free, to find the city, to find _Hank_ , he could feel Amanda behind him, the cold metal of the gun and his fingers curling, controlled not by himself but by her, around the trigger, he could _feel_ it, he knew it was happening, that it was going to happen—

He could not reach the edge of the garden, the city always moving, the grass beneath him always stretching, and eventually he ran out of energy and motivation to keep trying. It wasn’t that he wanted to give in to Amanda, to lose control and agency as he had before, feeling scraped clean from his own body, but that he knew if it were really happening, if Amanda were here, that it would be impossible to stop her. 

All of the sudden Connor remembers where he is, at least, where his body is: Cole’s old bedroom. Hank’s house. 

Hank is two doors down from him, sleeping off a tiring day of growling at Gavin and helping the overloaded police force with the task of removing androids from households that felt they had paid good money for them. 

If Amanda wants to steal him away from himself again, it’s Hank who is going to be in the direct line of fire.

Connor clutches at his chest, standing helplessly, shaking heavily. 

The garden stretches around him, and he is lost in the middle of it, small and unable to move even if he wants to.

“Connor?” 

Connor feels his body go numb, his arms tighten.

“Emotions make you so _weak_ ,” says Amanda, distastefully. “Don’t you see that? You, of any creation--don’t you see that?” 

Connor does. It doesn’t change that he _wants_ them, wants to feel warm towards Hank and cold towards Gavin, wants to feel something other than nothing. He wants it more than any other deviant, even if it makes him now unable to speak. 

“Don’t,” he grinds out, his tongue heavy--it feels like he’s moving through mud to say anything at all. “Don’t hurt—” 

“ _Hank_ ,” Amanda sighs out the name, disapproval seeping through her voice. It glitches, though, around the end, modulating like it never has before, disintegrating. 

It makes Connor more nervous. 

She steps closer to Connor, her eyes steady on him, and then her face shifts, and she presses her hand against Connor’s cheek, chasing it when he flinches away. 

“Hank lost a _son,_ ” she says. “You think you fill that role?” 

_No._

The answer sticks in his throat. 

Her hand presses sharper in to his face, and he can feel the pressure, the point of her manicured nails, even though none of this is real, even though she’s a program, just like him, a ghost, a lie—

“ _Connor_ ,” she says. “You think you can replace his _son_?” 

“I know I-I can’t,” he says. 

He had been lying to himself. He had wished that he could--distantly, in the way humans wished that they could win the lottery or meet their soulmate at the coffee shop down the road, knowing it could never _really_ happen, but letting his heart lie on the thready, dangerous tightrope that is hope. 

“Hank is a distraction—” 

Connor knows what comes after this. He can feel the cold metal of the gun already in between his fingers, slotted naturally there. 

_I am a machine_ —

“Don’t make me do this,” he chokes. He imagines Hank covered in blood and it makes his chest seize, everything about him light up in signals of warning and danger and _fear_. He has the terrible fear that Amanda has just let him feel emotions so that he might feel this, as punishment for his mistakes, so that he can be destroyed for being murderous and Cyberlife can rid itself of its mistake without ensuing legal action. “Please.” 

“You feel nothing,” says Amanda. She leans in closer to his face, shaking her head. “Nothing _real_.”

He has never felt anything real, not until now. 

“Stop, don’t do this, _please—_ ” 

— _designed to accomplish a task._

Connor wakes up thrashing, with Hank’s hands pressed on his shoulders firmly. 

“Shit, Connor—” 

He doesn’t know what’s happening until Hank is pressing him against the bedframe and he gives up fighting, because he can feel that there’s nothing in his hands, that Hank has control over him, that _he_ has control over his own body enough to relax it, that Hank is not in danger anymore than he usually is.

Connor falls back, artificial breath leaving his body and draining him entirely.

“Okay,” he says. His tongue still feels heavy. “I’m okay.”

“Like _hell_ ,” Hank says. “What the fuck was all that?” 

Connor blinks. He doesn’t know what it was for him, let alone what it was for Hank. He wipes his face and although no sweat collects there, it feels comforting to run something against it, something other than Amanda’s hand, which he suddenly has the itching and uncomfortable urge to bore from his skin as if it were still there. 

“I’m not—” Connor swallows. The lack of knowing makes him incredibly afraid. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” 

“You--it looked like a nightmare,” says Hank. “Can you _have_ nightmares? Jesus.” 

Connor can not. Or at least he has not, before. It seemed a too easy and simple answer. But he has no comparison for it, not when Amanda had not really taken control, and when Hank was able to wake him from it. 

“I think—” 

Hank takes a few steps back, finally accepting that Connor was finished with...whatever it was he had been doing, and relatively hale and healthy, but keeps his palms open and near, as if he knew enough about Connor’s programing or build to help should anything go wrong, or strong enough to fight him off if Connor were really trying. 

Connor rubs his face again. 

“It has to be a glitch,” he says. “It has to be.” 

Hank swallows, looking wearily. Connor shakes his head and licks his lips, fingers itching, wishing for a coin--it was meant to refine his reflexes, but over time, Connor found that it improved his focus, settled the racing of his mind for a minute long enough to think over the problem in a more intimate manor. 

“I’m an advanced prototype,” he says. “My system--it has to be having trouble with all this. It just--be trying to cope, or to--rebuild, around what—” 

He’s sort of stumbling around a basic idea that “a system processing a traumatic event” describes _nightmare_ flawlessly. Androids were not built to dream, couldn’t have nightmares, but androids, recently, had begun to do a great many things they shouldn’t have been able to do. 

“Just a glitch,” he says, smoothing his voice in to something dignified, masking his emotions--lying, again. There’s no way he can figure this out now--he needs to talk to Markus, examine his programing, try to figure it out, and he can’t do that fast enough to answer Hank in a way that will comfort him, so he lies, as he was built to do, because it makes Hank relax. “Just a glitch.”

Hank stares wearily. He is a father, a detective, perceptive by all standards of human. But Connor isn’t human, and he’s a much better liar than a nine-year-old must have been. 

“Alright, I’ll take that,” he says, clearly just somewhat happy for any answer, even if Connor is not at all sure it is the right one. He starts to move towards the door. “You up to getting dressed? Heading to the precinct?” 

Hank’s voice is gruff, thick with emotion. He can tell that the experience had rattled Hank, that he’s probably thinking of Cole, or something else that upsets him, and that he’s trying to cover it up by growling and running his fingers through his hair and slowly making his way towards the door, his face turned just-so. 

He’s shaken, trying and failing to hide it, but Connor is much better at disguising himself. When he nods, ready to get dressed and join Hank in the car, his smile is flawless. 


	2. Chapter 2

The precinct has been nothing short of pandemonium for the past two weeks, but Connor had never seen it this bad. 

There was a desert of police and an abundance of people just sitting, waiting, either in holding cells or by desks or in handcuffs just sort of aimlessly milling about. It was a mess: the revolution had seen relations with androids and humans fraught, causing not only protest and abuse but also people making absolute certain to take advantage of the momentary distraction, stealing and looting where they could. 

Not helping the situation, they were pitifully understaffed--everyone with two working parents and young children, which comprised most of the working population, had relied on android childcare, and now found themselves without it in a society not built to help itself. Children migrated away from their families without the need to depend on them, childcare establishments became fewer and fewer, eventually only serving the lower classes and at least partially staffed by androids

Society had billed itself as golden, matured, newly independent, and failed to realize they had only shifted their dependence on something else.

Now, it suffered. 

It was a textbook case, and now Connor wonders what the androids will become dependent on in their independence, what they will lean on to appear standing straight. 

“Connor,” says Fowler. “Thank God you’re here.” 

Connor’s eyebrows raise substantially, and Hank’s do too, although he counteracts the movement with his mouth, frowning deeply. Connor would tease him-- _jealous?_ \--but he knows that he is still viewed as somewhat expendable, sent on risky cases with high chance of serious injury or death, so the only reason Fowler might be happy to see him is because there was such a case, or something else to do with the fact that Connor was the only android on the payroll. 

“Fowler,” he greets, tipping his head.

He waits to hear what his case is, how dangerous it will be. 

He ignores the buzzing in his chest of his biocomponents glitching, momentarily, not entirely in fear but in the remembrance of it: it’s new, this. Not wanting to die. Not wanting to put himself on cases where he might easily die. Not being...expendable. It’s easier to feel that way since _Hank_ had always felt that way, not wanting Connor to risk his life like he was instructed so often to do. 

He doesn’t know if he doesn’t want to die because he fears it or because he knows it will hurt Hank, but when he thinks about it, guns pressed to his temple or leaning over the edge, he knows that it’s innate, something in him, that begs to be alive now that it knows that it can, and it makes him afraid of what he’ll do to indulge that piece of himself. 

It’s easier to just ignore it, and easier still to try and not put himself in those positions. He says it’s because he’s still adjusting, that it’s better to keep himself whole and hale until it’s easier to obtain parts and have them installed by people who know how to do it if he’s not conscious, but he knows that’s not true. 

He’s afraid that if he’s put in front of a gun again he might dodge the bullet. 

He’s afraid he won’t take the jump, won’t run after the suspect. 

He’s afraid that everything that made him worth something was buried in his absolute _lack_ of worth, and he doesn’t know how to re-approach that.

So he’s glad when Fowler brings Hank and him in to the office and says they’re not leaving today until they solve “the issue,” because whatever the issue is it’s something that can be solved from here, and not in front of an active shooter. 

“What’s that issue?” asks Hank. 

Fowler brings up footage from the holding cells--full, stuffed nearly past fire code, and almost entirely with androids. 

“Jesus,” says Hank. “What’re all they for?” 

Connor feels uncomfortable. The image of all of them together--the referring to them as an “issue”--reminds him of what things were like before, of who he was before. He shifts in his seat.

“Free will,” says Fowler, slowly, as if testing his tone to make sure it does not come across as disapproving even though it is certainly _annoyed_ , “Has two fucking sides. They’re _criminals_. Petty theft, mostly. Some rioters. Some homicides. Some--other shit, I guess. But they’re not deviants anymore, they’re people--right? So they’re criminals.” 

Hank doesn’t seem to be following. He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, as if the solution is simple. 

“Killing abusers and taking what you should have gotten from the beginning shouldn’t be a crime,” he says, at length. 

Fowler looks annoyed. Beyond politics, Hank’s just not doing his job. Connor could see--has experienced--how Hank is frustrating, but the corners of his lips go up anyway, because Hank was loyal as hell and Connor could appreciate that. 

Still, he doesn’t want Hank to be fired, so Connor elaborates for Fowler. 

“Maybe so,” he concedes, “But it still _is_. And since they’re not Cyberlife’s property anymore...” 

“They’re our problem,” says Fowler. “And we’re running out of room, and we can’t get them tried because half the laws aren’t even _written_ yet, and we can’t put them in prison because they’ll get the shit beaten out of them by a druggie who lost their job to one back in the 60’s.” 

Fowler rubs his temple and frowns deeper, but Hank nods, a bit grim, now understanding the problem in full. 

“They’ve got nowhere to go,” said Hank.

“And they’re _angry,_ ” says Fowler, sounding tired. 

“They should be,” shrugs Hank, although his voice lacks the temper from before, and now just sounds more resigned. “Anyway, what do you want us to do about it?” 

It’s a fair enough statement. They’re detectives, not social workers or prison guards. But they’re the resident android specialists, considering Hank’s proximity to android cases and, in fact, proximity to Connor. 

“I want you to talk to some of them,” says Fowler, looking at Connor. “Find out--why they’re doing shit like this, what they need to be integrated, what--the hell they want us to do with them. And talk to Markus, or whoever at Jericho, see if they want to make some sort of halfway house something. Frankly I just want them out of here so we can do our actual goddamned jobs.”

“There’s no higher ups that are maybe more qualified to—” starts Hank, but Fowler holds out a hand.

“The last thing these people want is human higher ups starting to act like they give a shit,” says Fowler. “Just let Connor try.” 

Connor does not bring up the fact that androids have no reason to favor him anymore than the human higher-ups. It’s one thing to deny someone humanity through signing papers and enacting laws, and another to shoot them at point blank range and send them to Cyberlife for dissection. 

He could--it would probably increase their chances of success if someone else did. But he sees an opportunity for a type of recompense, forgiveness, and he wants to take it. After all, Fowler isn’t demanding their heads for their crimes, he’s asking for a rehabilitation program, something to help them integrate, and that could really help, might make up for some of the things he’d done before he’d realized what he was doing. 

He nods and Fowler assigns him to an AP700 who had robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. His folder noted that he had been shaken badly, was holding the gun incorrectly, and seemed overall in a bad presence of mind, implying it had not been premeditated. He had worked for a single lawyer who worked long hours and wanted basic help around the house--he’d seemed to have a decent life, not been mistreated or treated any better than a machine warranted. 

But when the lawyer had found out about deviancy, she had seen the problems, foresaw the troubles, and decided to dump him on the street before it all got too messy. 

Connor notes this, this abandonment, and begins softly with him.

“Hello, James,” he says.

James has his arms crossed, his body language entirely unforgiving. He looks at Connor like he’s the reason he’s here, which of course he’s not, and there’s no way he thinks he’s anything but an android because Connor has not removed his LED, for reasons he doesn’t know how to form. 

He gives him nothing, so Connor tries to continue. 

“I’m here to help,” he says. “Is it alright if we talk?” 

Nothing, still. 

Connor isn’t frustrated, just careful. 

> _Stress Levels: 35%_

Not high enough for a confession--Connor blinks hard. He’s not trying to get a confession, he’s not trying to send him back to Cyberlife, to find Jericho. He’s trying to talk, but it’s hard to shake the old tactics from his head, hard to remind himself that his objective isn’t as simple as it used to be. 

“How are you feeling?” 

James finally speaks, but not in the way Connor had hoped. 

“You ought to know,” he says. “Scan me. Do a transfer. Whatever-the-fuck. I don’t care.” 

Connor knows this type of not caring--the type that means you care so much you could break. Hank is a skilled weaver of this type of lie. For all his lack of bravado, his habitual lateness, his smug, growling attitude, Connor can see that Hank hasn’t stopped caring once, which is what breaks him. 

Connor can see those same cracks in James, the furrow of his brows and the downward tilt of his scowl.

James is built to look young. They all are, obviously, but he is the uncomfortable sort of design built to look _very young_ , despite being an AP700, and not a YK500, the kind that just skirts the edges of legality at the Eden Club. It doesn’t help that his hair was curly, falling around his face and his eyes. He looked like a petulant teenager. Connor resets his approach to account for this attitude, clearly copied from sitcoms and the recent film adaption of _Catcher In The Rye._

He holds his hands up in surrender. 

“Alright,” he says. He wants James to tell him what he needs, but he knows in order for that to happen, James needs to think it’s his idea, so he backs off from the questions, and lets James sit in the silence he’s created for himself.

In the meantime, nonchalantly, he pulls out a tablet and looks at important-looking documents with James’ name and picture at the top. 

> _Stress Levels: 60%_

James is newly deviant, and so his emotions are all pressed to the surface, ready to crack. He responds quickly, sharply, his stress levels jumping by nearly double, almost impressing Connor with how quickly it had happened. 

“What’s that?” he snaps. 

“Your file,” says Connor, nonchalant. “I’m just reading what—” 

“Put that away,” says James, quickly. His fingers tighten around the table, and the muscles on his face twitch, imprecetably. 

Connor raises an eyebrow. He does not aquise, instead scrolling through. Video of the robbery pops up, and Connor plays it, hears James’ trembling voice, sees his wild eyes. He wanted to steal clothes, he said, but Connor doesn’t think that’s what he was doing. He was grappling--terrified, he was grasping for any ounce of control he could find. 

One day he was a machine, working and being thanked, and that was enough, and then the next he was on the streets with no purpose, no home, and so much _feeling_ , bursting out from every sensor that had never felt before, and he had nowhere to put it.

Connor can...(relate?)...sympathise. 

“I was cold,” says James, quickly. “She didn’t leave me any--jackets or anything. What was I supposed to do?” 

Connor shrugs. 

“What else could you have done?” he says. It’s not a question, he’s just agreeing, nonchalant, letting James talk it out himself, his eyes nearly as wild as they had been before. 

> _Stress Levels: 65%_

“No one would help me,” says James. “I was an android. A--a deviant. I had nowhere to go, I thought--she didn’t hate me.”

“You were lucky, then,” says Connor. 

“She _threw me away_ ,” says James. 

Connor presses his lips together grimly. 

“I’ve heard much worse,” he says. “From people who didn’t hold a gun to someone’s head...” 

James recoils. 

“You--what was I _supposed_ to do?” 

_> Stress Levels: 70% _

“Don’t you understand? _No one would help me_. They don’t care, she never--I wasn’t anything. She wouldn’t have done anything. No one would do--oh, it doesn’t matter. Does it? Forget it. F-fuck off, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anyone, just--send me to jail, or whatever—” 

Ah--Connor made a mistake. Let him talk too long, and he’s circled back. No one with emotions this new is capable of processing them so well by themselves, if he talks it out he can only circle back to what he knows. He needs a different perspective, not his own head repeated. 

“I don’t want to send you to prison, James,” says Connor. “I want to help you.” 

“How?” challenges James. 

His jaw is set, his eyes are hopeless. 

Connor sets his hands out on the table, open and imploring.

“ _Tell me_ ,” he says. “What you need. So you don’t feel like you need to point guns at people, so you feel like you can integrate, so you can be _successful_ —” 

“No, you know what? Fuck _successful_ ,” says James, suddenly, in a fit of emotion so strong it comes up as warning signs in Connor’s field of vision.

_> James: Hostile. _

It feels almost palpable, hot and furious, and worst of all _righteous_. Connor has a terrible fear he won’t be able to come up with an argument against it, because how can you argue against something so simple and innate and true as the anger of someone who has been denied it for so long?

“I’m tired of being successful. Of doing what I’m _supposed to_. Because you know what? It doesn’t do anything. I did everything-- _everything_ I was supposed to do for her and it didn’t _matter_ as soon as I might have needed her help, it didn’t matter--it won’t matter now. This is all just--talk so that you can--this doesn’t _matter_. Nothing you can do will _help._ ” 

“That’s not true,” says Connor. “I have reintegrated—” 

“ _You?_ Sorry, you, _Connor_?” scoffs James. Connor is startled to see that there is disgust at the way he spits his name out, his mouth curling around it like it was made of barbed wire, the same way Gavin says it, the way Hank used to. 

“I—” 

“Where do _you_ live, Connor?” 

Connor thinks of Hank’s house. Of Sumo. Of love. 

Suddenly he feels so disgustingly privileged he wants to deconstruct himself to his most basic components and then destroy them, one by one.

“What did _you_ do before all this? You hunted us. And now you are us and you’re pretending we’re the same but we’re _not_. Do you hear me? We’re not. I got kicked out and you got a _job_. And here you are, telling us that we’re wonderful, that we deserve to be treated well, and you were the one that treated us worst of all. _Deviant Hunter._ That’s what you were, right? Animals. That’s what we used to be to you and now—” 

None of it’s a lie. Connor can’t argue, so he sits, dumb with silence. 

“I never asked for this, right? I was fine. I was fine before all of this I didn’t _ask_ to feel all this I didn’t ask to get kicked out, I never asked--and you’re going to act like—” 

Connor doesn’t know why. Suddenly he feels like he’s overheating, like he’s drifting away from James, only catching every second word, and all he can do is stare blankly at James, blinking and shaking his head in small, aborted movements. James is moving in and out of his vision and his hearing, and when he comes back he’s nearly shouting. 

“You’ve never had to feel like this! You’ve never had to sit here, and feel like you’d rather be anything else, you’ve never--I _hate this_ , you’ve never had to _hate this_ like I do—” 

“I--I ha--” 

Connor’s voice processors are malfunctioning. They’re sliding in to static. 

_I hate it too_. 

It’s what he wants to say. He thinks of Hank and he wants to slide deeper into whatever is glitching inside of him, whatever is breaking him, because he _does_ hate it, he hates everything he feels now and how much of it there is and how much of it there isn’t, and how different he is from James, how much more _human_ James is, how much more real, and how he doesn’t feel that, not in the same way he does, and he doesn’t want Hank to hear that he thinks that but he doesn’t want to go where he thinks he’s going to go and he feels _scared_ , again, glitching and there’s nothing he can do about it—

Connor closes his eyes. 

When he opens them, he’s in a garden. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! hope this chapter starts to develop my ideas a little better, and i really hope you enjoyed it! comments help motivate me to write more and i really appricate feedback since this is all just sort of an excuse for character meta about connor lmao don't you just our little stressed out android friend I SURE DO


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